


Between Villains

by bible



Category: Dark Avengers (Comic)
Genre: M/M, Racist Language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-09
Updated: 2014-07-03
Packaged: 2018-01-20 02:28:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,926
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1493323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bible/pseuds/bible
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>With a love that the wingèd seraphs of Heaven<br/>Coveted him and me.</p><p>Or more accurately:</p><p>We held hands and killed people.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. One

**Author's Note:**

> An AU that takes place throughout, and after, Daredevil, volume 1, issues 196-200.
> 
> Daken and Bullseye meet earlier than they did in Dark Avengers.
> 
> FUCK continuity.
> 
> Previously titled "Saltwater King." Un-beta'd. If there are any spelling mistakes, feel free to point them out to me.

 oh heavy  
with a look of satin put round her face  
with the devil peering close by  
on the street  
with a little boy charm and  
anchors of wide heavy iron  
at her feet  
she whispers and cries  
in harmonies  
for her saltwater king

* * *

 

One cruel child made one remark too many -- And something _snapped_ in Chuckie's mind. Lord only knows where he _found_ the gun... Even for _children_ , they're all too _easy_ to come by.

Hot sweat beads across Bullseye's forehead.

It itches beneath the bandages.

 _It's very true_ , he had wanted to say to Daredevil, helpless, in what he thought were his final moments. ( _I'm Chuckie_ , as well, but his mouth was glued shut. His jaw did not move.)

He reaches up to scratch at his bandages, his hands warm, heart pounding, desperate calloused palms sliding over his forehead and his sweaty skin. Pulling. Itching. Beading up like dried crumbs that stuck to his body.

 _I'm Chuckie. I brought my gun to school and I got away with it. I didn't cry. I was angry. No one knew I was Chuckie. But_ you _would if I could speak. I walked into the school from the second level of the rotunda and fired off three rounds. No one saw me. No one knew. I came to school the next week, because it was closed the days after the massacre, and I wore my baseball cap, and my foster dad told me to be careful._

_So was he me? Was he his father?  
Or was he you, Daredevil?_

He _wants_ noise now. He cherishes every word he speaks. He loves the sound of his own voice. It's not pretension, it's vital. It's a gift, and an opportunity. 

It's too hot. Warmth dribbles from the sweat at his temples, his hands are clammy and soup crawls up his legs, bubbly and warm beneath his calves.

... _Soup_?

A smooth voice, in English. "High noon."

Bullseye blinks away his dream. Nightmare. Memory. 

Warm seawater bubbles up in foamy rivulets against the rocks and sand at the coastline. The air is salty, cool against his face when the wind blows, but pressure heavy in the atmosphere when it is still. Up his legs, the water licks at his knees, creeping higher over the silk he's been provided from Lord Dark Wind. The cloth is thin and sticks to his skin. Bullseye curses creatively and blinks away the spots that have settled over his vision. His heart still pounds, and his hands were scrambling up the bandages at his head. He lowers them. A sheen of perspiration, or maybe ocean water sticks to his palms.

The beach is empty of visitors, like it was this morning. He just couldn't be cooped up in the temple any more. No matter how good the food was, no matter how many weapons they provided him, he needed his air. In the temple, it was hot. Nothing like the smell of Japanese warriors speaking rapidly about trust and uttering the word 'American' about him when they attempted English. Bullseye had been shoving around some warrior who seemed especially concerned about servicing his Lord, Kira something or other, when he was dragged off after he had thrown a fork into his shoulder, penetrating the skin and adjusting the bone. He had said that a 'gaijin' wasn't worthy of servicing his Lord. _Bullshit, I'd just wanted a spine_. _Fuck you, chink_. 

He was sure punishment was imminent, but the Lord was all too impressed with his capability on making someone requisite of major medical attention with something as harmless as an eating utensil. Also, they did not understand the severity of the racist terms, or exactly that they were indeed racist.

When he pushes up his sunglasses, and looks up from where he's laying on the beach, he's met with an unfamiliar face. Another Japanese man, but he can definitely see American or European. He's interesting. A mohawk. A traditional tattoo twining down his arm and over his chest. Strange penetrating grey eyes, unreadable and settled over Bullseye.

He points upwards, at the sky. "High noon," he repeats, "High tide was about to wash you away had I not woken you up."

Lester seems baffled. He puts his sunglasses back down and pulls himself to his feet. The other man is shorter than him, but most people in this country are. Five-eight must be his height, minimum. Somehow, however, his presence seems overwhelming. His gaze is penetrating. 

Bullseye scratches his head. "Um," he starts, "Thanks."

The stranger nods and scratches at his jaw in a mimicry of Bullseye's own actions. His nails are black. Bullseye fights down a sneer. "I am not often responsible for the saving of others. You had fallen asleep and I was content with watching you drown had you lay there any longer. You slept in fits. It was pretty amusing. I feel as though you are normally prepared for dangerous situations. Shame your own thoughts get the better of you - things that cannot hurt you will surely be your own demise."

Bullseye blinks twice, rapidly, a hitch pulled tight between his brows.

Brutal honesty. How refreshing. Bullseye clenches his fists until his knuckles go white.  His voice has the dry crackle of worthless embers and the echo of a space filled with nothing but bitter smoke. " _Well_. Aren't _you_ \- "

The man lifts a palm, his expression that of haughty superiority. He lets ice into his tone. It does not go unnoticed. "I am not finished."

He stares at Bullseye as though he's a misbehaving kid, eyes judgmental. 

They sweep over his frame, and his lips quirk up in a smirk, and his brow bunches up on his forehead in a cock. As though he is not impressed.

Bullseye throws his punch without his own mind's permission. It's to land on his cheek. His arm is jerked out of its socket, almost, and he growls out a noise while the beach in front of him spins so he's facing the back of the temple once more. Before he knows it, his wrist is pinned behind his back. He grunts out a curse and wonders how delicious the stranger's cheekbone would look pushed in and bruised had that hit landed.

"The _fuck_ you are? Another _fuckin_ ' 'warrior' or whatever the _fuck_ \- "

"Such language from such a pretty mouth."

He releases Bullseye, who steps back and turns around to face him. He thinks about shoving his face into a grey-blue, sharp-edged rock he had been admiring before drifting to sleep, surface marred by eddies and waves of the ocean crash. The wind blows and the stranger's long hair fluffs all over the place, strands falling past his penetrative gaze. The rock matches his eyes. Well, good. Maybe he could put the mineral into his cornea and it'll still match his iris, red on both.

"Do you _want_ something, you little faggot?"

"My name is Daken," he says, and steps forward. He doesn't smell any different than the sky and the sea but when Bullseye sucks in a breath he somehow feels as though he's inhaling a different incense. It's calming almost, the endorphins in his blood slowing and causing his shoulders to slump as he willingly, strangely enough, listens to Daken's words. "I have been monitoring Lord Dark Wind's premises in order to understand his program more. Since your arrival, I have become enthralled in the surgery you've undergone. Adamantium is the most precious metal. I would - "

"No."

Daken's brows pull together. His confusion completely shatters the facade of control. Suddenly, his eyes seem less governing. His head tilts only the slightest. "Pardon."

"No. You don't get to ask what happened. You don't get to ask how it felt. You don't get to get what I have."

Daken's lips draw into a flat line. He makes a sound, his Adam's apple bobbing taut in his throat as though he is about to wet his cheeks. It's such a drastic change that Bullseye pulls his lips back in disgust, eyes widened. It's like he's morphed into another person. He feels as though he's standing adjacent to a MPD patient. "I _need_ the adamantium." He sounds desperate as a child, and it's like a splash of cold water to the face.

This man has just deteriorated from sophistication and all-out cavalier to a puerile mess. And, inexplicably, Bullseye wants to placate him. Daken steps closer, eyes telling a tale of desperation, and he touches his chest. "You know what it's like..." he starts, "You know what it's like to _need_ the adamantium."

He steps back, horrified.

This man _knows_ what happened, doesn't he?

He knows about Daredevil's little story. He knows about the fall somehow. The thoughts come like a barrage of bullets, quick and painful and then the attention is pulled to the oncoming one, the one that hasn't assaulted him yet and Bullseye's bandages begin to feel slimy and wet from his sweat.

Bullseye slaps his hand from his chest. He will _not_ be controlled that easily. He's _no one's_ puppet. Even under the Kingpin's rule, he's his own man.

Bullseye leans in to his personal space, all glares and a pulled-back sneer that exposes every tooth in his head. He grabs him by the jaw. "You some meta _freak_?"

Daken looks about to cry. He draws his tongue over his upper lip and widens his eyes. "You're not? I've seen you fight."

Bullseye wipes the sand from his forearms and steps back. His voice is more controlled. His command is stern, eyes averted. "Don't talk to me again. Don't show up. Stop watching me."

"If you forget," and suddenly, his voice is void of all the adolescence it just held once more, "If I weren't watching you, you would have drowned."

 _Hardly_ , thinks Bullseye. He would have been jerked awake in seconds from his nightmare, even if Daken had not been there. The water just _might_ be _that_ much higher. Everyone wakes the minute the nightmare reaches its climax. (This time, Daredevil had the bullet.)

"Was gonna wake up anyway."

"What if I had been Daredevil rather than myself?"

Bullseye swallows, cold dread swallowing up his limbs. Heavier now, from the adamantium. Still, he moves with grace. Which is how Daken ends up on his back in the sand, Bullseye's foot on his chest, pinning him down heavy.

"Then I would kill you."

Daken grabs his leg. 

"We share similar interests, Bullseye."

Bullseye's brows raise. Daken walks his fingers up to his knee. "We'll be _great_ friends."

This is what happens that confirms Daken's words:

Bullseye pulls back his foot, and brings it unto Daken's nose with a crunch carrying so many decibels of pain behind the adamantium that it would paralyze the normal human. He steps back with a heaving chest to observe his work, eyes gleaming with sadistic glee and he drops low to watch the light fall away from Daken's eyes so he can just carry his limp body into the sea-foam and watch it float away to be eaten by some monster with acid-tipped teeth. 

Simply, Daken's head lolls towards Bullseye, eyes calm, his jaw grit but his face otherwise retaining serenity. He blinks twice, three times and the blood that trickled from his nose like syrup dries up and disappears. The split above his nose closes, the red falling away like someone's brought an invisible eraser to his maw. Rubbing his nostrils as though he'd just snorted cocaine, he sits up on his elbow and runs his tattooed hand through his hair until the particles of sand fall away from the mohawk.

"That hurt."

Bullseye's stunned.

He drops to his hands and knees in the sand, mindful of the pieces of silt scraping up the cloth and his knees and puts his hand to Daken's wrist. He digs his nails into Daken's skin, as though he's about to peel back layers of body to get to bone. "Let me see them."

Daken grins, smile that of a man victorious. "You will help me kill the Wolverine and Daredevil."

"Wolverine isn't in the country."

Daken rolls onto his side, props his head up on his fist. He stretches and his ribs show through his skin along with bunches of muscles. "You're returning to America, though."

"Not for another week."

"And Daredevil will follow you."

"You know he's here?"

" _You_ know he's here." Daken lifts his free hand. Curls it into a fist. Bullseye's breath goes short. 

The spot that rests against his wrist is a teaser, a predecessor to the full thing. A prick of red, settled dark over something sharp. Torn skin. It glimmers with the promise of something amazing. _Mutants don't deserve half of this_ , thinks Bullseye.

The claws unsheathe, bone and glimmering curved blackness. It's beautiful. Breakable. Sharp. Bullseye stares, enthralled, but alert, in case he decides to send these towards his head. He reaches out and feels them. They're almost metallic, and that's surprising, because they are indeed bone. Cool to the touch.

"Now," Daken says, and they fall into his hand again, thin out in his skin and the wounds heal immediately at where they protruded, at his wrist, at the back of his hand. He falls onto his back, stretching out his limbs, sinewy and sweaty, in the sand. "We will return to America together. We will find Daredevil and Wolverine and we will kill them both."

"What's in it for me?" Bullseye says suspiciously. 

Daken pulls himself to his feet, offers a hand for Bullseye. He takes it, unwary of the weapons grafted to his arms. "A human shield if Daredevil thinks too much. Pleasure of an approving witness when you kill him. Fresh blood on your hands."

Bullseye cocks his head. Looks over Daken. 

"Deal."

* * *

"Nobody moves and nobody gets hurt," Bullseye lies, guns in both hands, leather on his shoulders and jeans on his legs.

Under his breath, near Bullseye's ear, Daken laughs gratingly and goes: "You idiot."

Bullseye contemplates shooting him in the foot, but there's only so much ammo.

Daken's a little angry at him - he never found the time to douse his claws in the adamantium. So all the goddamn day he's been dragging his feet, avoiding his eyes, crossing his arms, pouting and blowing stray strands of hair that fall into his eyes out of his line of vision with audible exhales. To say it's the most obnoxious thing Bullseye has ever had to listen to would be a vast understatement. Even the girl in his high school World History class who made mouth noises was more tolerable than the heavy sighs and short answers.

It's like dealing with a wife. A crazy, male, killer wife who happens to be Wolverine's son.

Honestly, it's giving him a headache.

Now don't get Bullseye wrong. He's thinking what we're all thinking. Leave the bastard and go on your merry way.  
But if you heard what Bullseye heard - the lurid Deadpool-Bucky Barnes-Wolverine story, anyway - and got to see Daken in action against the projectiles Bullseye had thrown at him, and then the hooker they took and offed for fun, you'd be keeping him around too. (Unless, of course, you're sane.)

He can't wait to team-up against Daredevil. Of course, he will be the one to deliver the final blow, but it'll look even nicer with long, claw-shaped slashes against his skin when he feeds him the bullet or the sai. 

And hey, what's more fun than offing an X-Man who also happens to be a shit father? (And, okay, so _what_ if Bullseye spilled the beans on his own history? It was only after Daken's - his tale made his family past seem less fist-fucked.) 

The air is heavy with anticipation. A sweaty stand-still that makes the leather jacket cling to the small of Bullseye's back. Finally, in silence, Kira steps forward, nihontō drawn. He yells out an order in stern Japanese. 

Bullseye lifts the guns. "Yeah, yeah. Ching chong ling long go _fuck yourself_."

He can hear Daken's less than amused scoff, and then the ninjas surround them. Kira stands in front of them both. 

The last few days have been planning and talking in hushed voices in close proximity, and the occasional night outing to off a few hookers and bums. Bullseye had Daken sneak in the palace in the night, had him dismantle all security, take out the fiercest warriors stealthily. No suspicion was placed upon Bullseye due to the circumstance of always being in Lord Dark Wind's line of vision, at his side, discussing advancements in the medical technology settled into him. Of course, the suggestion that Bullseye could be controlling the murders from a distance came up, but it "made no sense! How could Bullseye have relations in Japan"?!

All in all, he was planning on robbing them poor and disappearing in the night with only a few dead bodies on the door-steps and the lights off, sheets tucked in. But Kira, the whiny bastard, who basically wants to jack off with some lotion labeled "honor," had been following him. And Bullseye wanted to hit himself in the head for underestimating a ninja, even with keeping his scent down, smell stealthy while Daken and himself attempted to infiltrate the account where all their funds were kept.

Kira had flicked on the lights, and a number of warriors filled the room. How many, Bullseye didn't fucking know, but -

"Twelve bullets. Thirty six warriors," he says in a broken attempt at English - Bullseye thinks: _Engrish_ \- and the martial artist masters draw in. Daken has yet to unsheathe his claws and Lester is becoming increasingly touchy. 

"You're wrong," Lester says, advancing a few steps, head tilted back to assert his size, the barrel of the gun pressed between Kira's brows. Bullseye tilts his head down, grins and an _evil_ glint crosses over his eye. His lip twitches, and he wonders if any of these buffoons know of the Night Stalker. "You know, wish I had time to translate that shit burned into your _fucking_  boss's face. I'm sure it says something along the lines of: _slant_. Aren't Asians supposed to be good at math? I _have_ eleven bullets."

Kira maintains calamity, but Daken can smell the anger coming off of him in red hot waves, visual provided from his hands that tighten around the blade. He lifts the sword and brings it down. Bullseye swoops low to dodge where it was to land through his head, and laughs, coming around him to keep the gun to his head. Kira attempts stabbing him in leg, throwing the sword to his other hand and catching it so the blade faces away from him. Smoothly, he cuts it along Lester's calf. The cloth spits and blood seeps out easy. Lester inhales sharply, but the barrel falters none, though his attention is diverted.

Kira lifts the sword in order to chop off his leg, moving his head around so Bullseye may miss.

Except...

" _Filthy_ gaijin -"

Bullseye lifts his booted foot quicker than Kira can expect that he's capable of lifting his leg that high, and brings it down on his wrist, breaking it with a satisfying crunch. Kira cries out, weapon clattering to the ground. "Eleven, you son of a bitch."

Frantically, in Japanese, he yells: "Kill him!"

The first gunshot that enters Kira's head almost signifies the rest of the night's fight. It rings through the palace, the first trigger pulled in a number of months. Years, maybe, that Bullseye's been here.

But before it ascends, Lester turns to Daken. He lifts both hands. The black claws slide out. " _Sloppy_ , _really_ ," he says in Japanese. " _Let us see if you were following his orders or your Lord's_."

The blood trickles down his wrists beautifully, painting a new color into his tattoo, a tail twinging against the swirling black ink.

Lester thinks it's the most beautiful thing he's seen. But then Daken sinks those claws into the guts of a ninja who advances with intent on slitting his throat, and Daken turns gracefully, tearing the claws out to slice them across the face of another warrior, wordlessly, elegantly.

Daken fires off the next shot without looking, the bullet deciding where to hit, and the cry of pain he hears is secondary, while watching Daken crane his neck back to flash his eyes in a smile at an advancing ninja before he kills him will last forever. Then Daken runs at one of the other ninjas, acting as though the sword he holds is but a pen, and lifts himself to wrap both legs around his neck, throwing his upper weight back and using all the strength in his calves to yank him down, his hands, palms flat, on the floor. His face goes flying into the wooden panels and Daken's left on the ground, on his hands in knees while behind him, the ninja clutches his face in pain. He steps up, claws completely exposed while he turns and advances.

Digging his heel into the ninja's gullet, he points his claws at his face, and yanks his hand back. His forearm is tense with holding back from sinking them in through his eyes with a muted squish. The man is trying to plead, trying to fight him off, but Daken speaks in rushed, harsh tones: "There is no reason to act like an animal. _Pigs_ are put down."

Bullseye doesn't realize he himself has used all his bullets and there lay twelve dead warriors at his feet until Daken starts makin' bacon.

* * *

Flight from Nagasaki to +40° 49’ 12.54”, -72° 38’ 18.52” New York City, New York. Where they would drive past the holes-in-the-wall offering sixty-minute divorces, and the strangely denuded storefronts that Vice continually begged for the budget to surveil for drug traffic. Past Ground Zero, this morning sound-tracked by the gunfire snapping of badly secured plastic tarps in the breeze and the cursing of the mini-entrepreneur suck-fish trying to stop their Korean War picture postcards from blowing off their folding-card tables by the fence.

"Are you ready, are you ready for this? Are you hanging on the edge of your seat? Out of the doorway the bullets rip to the sound of the beat!"

Bullseye's actually not too bad of a singer. He lay back in the first class seat, singing lowly to himself, his grin a wide rictus and eyes focused on the window. There's a half-empty glass of Delamain Le Voyage cognac in his hand, courtesy of Lord Dark Wind's funds. Bullseye took a sip, and decided that if Mother Teresa had ever served iced coffee in the depths of Calcutta, it probably wouldn't have tasted quite as bad as this. Daken sits in the seat beside him, clothes expensive and hair brushed until it gleams. He glares off to the side, and when Bullseye tries to talk to him he frowns and scoffs.

It's the most passive-aggressive bullshit he's ever experienced. But the ocean looks beautiful from up here and maybe he can blow up a plane later. (Should have taken the plane provided but a hundred of the Lord's ninjas waited for them with bated breath, which meant it was public airlines.) Or maybe that's too much bad-assery in one day.

Twenty minutes pass and Queen falls from his lips.

Finally, Bullseye exhales and turns towards him. "So, what's your problem?"

Daken, the stubborn bastard, rests his chin on a curled fist and looks across the plane at one man in a business suit. His eyelashes are darker than his hair, almost blue in the light. Daken's very feminine. He drops his chin from his hand and rests both palms in his lap, sighs through his nose.

"The _fuck_ , Daken?"

Finally, the mutant turns to him, sweeps his eyes over him and draws his lips into a thin line. "Yes?"

"'s your problem?!"

Daken looks at him with disgust. "Did you know Queen is also, in your gentle words, a faggot?"

Bullseye's jaw drops, his eyes narrowing with accusation and confusion. His voice is a whisper. "You can tell someone you want them dead and then kill 'em, and you can't handle a little fuckin' slur?"

"I hope you realize World War II ended, what, forty years ago? 'Jap' is no longer a relevant term, you bigot."

Bullseye rolls his eyes and holds up his palms, "Dude, come on. They were callin' me 'gaijin' and 'American dumbass' or some rough translation of it. Serves them right."

"The murder wasn't enough?"

Bullseye growls, leans over close and narrows his eyes. "It _never_ is."

He might be referring to the insults that spilled past his lips like sluggish, honey-thick blood, or the numbers piling high in American dollars they've sent over to his account through one rat-hole Bullseye's picked up in Sweden. The memory is fresh in his mind.

Daken had left the room momentarily, and Lester sat back in a plush couch across from what he called the Master Forger.

"Out of curiosity, though, what ways did Daken suggest to you? I am interested to hear the bank's latest rhetoric in this area." With that, the Master Forger leaned back and interlaced his fingers over his belly.

Mirroring his body language, Bullseye slid back from the edge of the couch and said, "Well, the first way he recommended was through a debit card. That seemed fucking outlandish to me, if you'll pardon my fucking French. I mean, running around town with a debit card tied to a foreign account leaves a paper trail a mile wide." He shook his head and rolled his eyes to drive his point home. "And the second recommendation was equally ridiculous: I would use my overseas money to take out a mortgage on my old home, in the United States. Anyway, I trust that none of this will be repeated to Daken, but I have to admit I was extremely disappointed with this part of his presentation. So tell me, Roland - what am I missing here?"

Master Forger, Roland, Bullseye's connection the US and the Kingpin, smiled confidently. "There are many ways to do this, all of which leave no paper trail whatsoever. Or, to be more accurate, they leave a very wide paper trail, but it's just the sort of trail you would like to see, the sort that supports a position of complete innocence and will stand up to the most intense scrutiny, on both sides of the Atlantic. Are you familiar with the practice of transfer pricing?"

Transfer pricing? Yes, he knew what it was, but how on the fucking earth would... - all at once a thousand nefarious strategies went flashing through Bullseye's brain. The possibilities were limitless. He smiled broadly at his Master Forger, and said, "Actually, I do. And it's a brilliant idea."

And - yes. You guessed it.

Bullseye and Daken successfully put themselves out as Wall Street stockbrokers.

For all Master Forger knew, _The Kingpin_ was a firm in New York, not the head of a national criminal empire. Swedish asshole.

He seemed shocked that Bullseye knew about the little-known art of transfer-pricing, which is a financial shell game where one would engage a transaction, either underpaying or overpaying for a particular product, depending on which way you wanted your money to flow. The rub lied in the fact that you were actually on both sides of the transaction: You were both the buyer and the seller. Transfer pricing was used mostly as a tax dodge, a strategy employed by billion-dollar multinational corporations - whereby they would alter their internal pricing strategies when selling from one wholly owned subsidiary to another - which resulted in the transfer of profits from countries with heavy corporate income-tax burdens to countries with none. Bullseye had read something about it in an obscure economics magazine - an article about Honda Motors, which was overcharging its U.S. factories for automotive parts, thereby minimizing U.S. profits. For obvious reasons, the IRS was in an uproar.

Roland said, "I am surprised you know about transfer pricing. It is not a widely known practice, especially in the U.S."

Bullseye shrugged. "I can see a thousand ways to use it, to move money back and forth without raising any eyebrows. All we have to do is form a bearer corporation and interposition it in some sort of transaction with The Kingpin."

Roland smiled. He loved Bullseye. He was a man of power, and Daken and Bullseye were both men who could be trusted. And this was the land of Japan, the glorious land of secrets, where neither of them would have any reason to betray Roland!

Alas, he would be wrong about both of them.

So now, one sixty-something suit lay in the plush carpet of a floor, rapidly cooling, covered in worthless junk traded between the Master Forger and Kingpin's items, and forty-million American dollars sits in the Kingpin's office. 

There's no reason to not celebrate.

He leans over to say something to Daken, but Daken lifts a hand and presses two fingers to his mouth. Bullseye amuses the thought of biting them off.

"Your breath smells of alcohol."

Bullseye throws his hands up, rolls his eyes. Daken stands up, shoots him a glare and makes his way to the businessman. Lester watches carefully, his chin lowered on his fist, crinkles around his eyes when he narrows them. 

Daken's hands sidle up to the man's shoulders. He points at the seat and the man lowers his Wall Street Journal, looks up at him through large eyes. A flush spreads over his cheeks. He nods frantically, and Daken sits next to him. Bullseye bristles with red-hot anger, inexplicably. He turns back towards the window. The sky is darkening rapidly, and Lester's appreciative that the day dies. 

He leans his head back, finishes his cognac and watches a stewardess pass and pick up his glass. Lester stares at her brown skin. She blinks. 

"Would you like anything else?"

 _Your head on a platter_ , he thinks. Then his eyes trail over to Daken who's drawing circles on the thin man's thigh. The man's horn-rimmed glasses have been long since put away. Then he realizes _Daken's_ wearing them and feels sick. The hostess' line of vision follows his and she sees them and rolls her eyes.

Bullseye's lips quirk up. Yeah, he likes her. Her bitch-face matches his.

"Right?"

"Right," she says, monotonous. "So, nothing else?"

Bullseye shakes his head. Then he stops, and nods. "Yes, a blankie."

"A blankie."

"You heard me."

"Are you serious?"

"No."

She walks away. He looks behind her and thinks about killing her and thinks no real satisfaction would be spurred from it, and that's enough of a mundane consolation to soothe the anger churning in his veins. He closes his eyes before he can let them settle on Daken's flirtish tendencies. He's gonna get them all killed someday.

Maybe that's his plan. Well, not before Daredevil came to hell with Bullseye. Not before he decapitated the Wolverine.

Not before, not before.

Bullseye stretches.

He sleeps.

* * *

 

Red, bright, and stretched tight over the sinew of muscle. Red eyes, lenses pulled over to minimize any humanity. To show no empathy. The curl of horns and maybe a tail later on. Bloodied fists and a torn open mouth, teeth white but splattered with crimson iron of his own blood. Pallid skin of his maw scarred and ripped at.

And himself, monochromatic, with crazy Aryan eyes and said red pushing at his jaw, leaving purple-blue-black-yellow-a fuckin' rainbow of bruises. Here.

He's coming for you.

Don't you know? _I'm_ coming for you.

"Bad dream, again," Daken's voice is slimy and his breath crosses along the slope of his neck. Bullseye blinks his eyes open, and is greeted with stale plane air. The grey slopes of chairs greets him, gross yellow lighting turned on for book-readers on the overhead, but otherwise the atmosphere stays relaxing and dark. Bullseye rubs his eyes, rhume not yet gathered at the corners of them.

He hums a little and Daken's lips twitch in what he thinks is a smile. 

"How long I been out?"

"Long enough for me to ride that broker to town and back."

The anger hits Bullseye like a freight train. His line of vision goes to the dumbass at the chair, who's also asleep. He searches for cum stains and inhales deeply, but nothing but the smell of old crumbs and stagnant air hits his senses. "Bullshit, fuckin' on a plane's _illegal_."

Daken laughs, sits back and crosses his arms behind his head. "I always wondered what they might do if someone was having sex. Would it be 'I will turn this plane around, right now!'"

Lester gets a chuckle out of that, and shakes his head. "Nah, probably just tell you to get off. 'Just. Get out of this plane right now. Just jump. Goodbye.'"

"It's funny you're now concerned of the illegalities of airplane conduct. I did not suck his cock, but what I did do was illegal in all types of ways." Anyone listening may curl in their lip in disgust, assuming gay sex, but Bullseye knows exactly what he means.

He spots the red veins pulled from his wrist like crimson worms a second later.

* * *

 

From there, it is like this. There are fights, and rarely, there is getting along. Very often, there is murder. When they arrive in America, Bullseye lights the Kingpin's cigarette, announces his debut with a dramatic push of the door, both hands framing the doorjamb. His hips jut out to the side, his head lifted as if he were flipping his hair - had he any.

"Bullseye's back!"

"Blood on your knuckles already, I see," Fisk says, reclining in his absurd zebrawood chair. Nothing in the office matches. There is no unifying approach, no theme at work. No taste, Bullseye supposes. Just a collection of very expensive things that don't go together. Except, presumably, by the scale of their price tags. Bullseye inspects the leather of his white glove, rubs it at his shoulder. Particles of Daken on his right fist; always on his right. He didn't let Daken drive.

Daken had snickered ferociously when he first donned his costume. _Oh, and you are not gay. Of course._

_Shut your mouth or I'll shut it for you._

_Oh, I'll bet -_

The crunch at his jaw signified silence. Then he departed, leaving Daken to tend to his already-healing maw and instructions to meet him outside. (He didn't trust Daken within a fibre of his being, but Daken was useless in this country without him, unless he ended up attaching to himself to another criminal who made even _more_ money. But that criminal would not know where the Wolverine was, would he?)

Then the Kingpin tipped his cigarette ash into a crystal ashtray and granted him the keys to a building on the mouth of Hell's Kitchen, after complimenting the work they'd done in retrieving the money. Bullseye spreads his legs on the table and points a finger at him, thumb jutted up. "You got ya top assassin back, sweetie."

So now Daken and Bullseye lay side-by-side on the boxing stage, staring at the faded paintings from the 50's of boxers in shorts and gloves. It's not too different, really. The 1980's just provides _that_ much more length to gym shorts. 

"Paint's chippin'."

"Good."

Bullseye turns his head. "Good?"

"Look at his eyes."

Bullseye turns his head to the image of a red-headed boxer in red short-shorts, with red gloves. Cherry-pop man with what he assumes was supposed to be a menacing glare. Both his eyes, bright green, migrate in two directions away from each other. The left is pulled up towards the ceiling, the other glaring right at him, lips pulled down in a frown. The muscles painted in his stomach clench awkwardly. He looks fucking autistic.

"Jesus Christ," snickers Bullseye. He lifts a hand, points to a dude with a mask on that looks strikingly similar to Daredevil's. "Check out his speedo."

"Sexy."

"I want him dead."

"Well," Daken lifts himself onto his elbows, and it sounds like a crab unfolding, important-sounding bones crunching inside of him frighteningly. Bullseye looks concertedly to Daken, his brows raised. He finishes cracking his spine, "Looks like he's giving this guy a really hard time." He motions to the image of the man he's choking with, what appears to be, a Billy Club. In big, red font about their names, faded and used, is scrawled: 

**TONIGHT  
RED DEVIL**

Huh.

Symbolism.

"Please," Bullseye chuckles. "I could take 'em."

Daken laughs. The water in the doorway drips. It's a shit-place, where's he's thrown, but in the purchase of his pent-house, he had to wait it out somewhere while Kingpin's lackeys moved furniture in, if only for tonight.

It's not the foot steps that alert him, the force of his adamantium-gilded skull clapping between his palms. Bullseye groans, pants, his heart racing. Curling up and pulling his joints until they are soothed, he slaps his hands flat against the floor.

"He is here," Daken says, the exact same time Bullseye says in a shaky breath: "Fuck it, he's here."

Daredevil sense is a killer. Really, Bullseye is _tired_ of these head issues.

"Suit up."

Daken scrambles to his feet while Bullseye forces his head out of his grasp, heart pounding, jaw tightened. "Is Wolverine here?"

"I don't know," Bullseye pulls himself to his feet. "Weapons in place?"

"He should not be here. We will attack him separate from Daredevil."

Bullseye grits his teeth, shaking the reverberating pounding from his head, air heavy like someone just tainted the air with shotgun blasts. " _Are the weapons in place or not_?" he demands.

"Yes," Daken says, smoothly, clicking his tongue. "They are in place, my _master_." Sarcasm is evident even in the monotony of his tone.

Daken unfolds, and turns to the door-way. "Then it's show-time."


	2. Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set, obviously, after the events of Daredevil #200, volume 1.

oh heavy  
are you my boy with demons in your sleeve  
they're trouble placing razors and pins  
underneath your feet  
you my little boy charm with  
anchors of wide  
ship wrecked bloody open sea  
you whisper and cry  
in harmonies  
for your saltwater queen

* * *

It's nearing nightfall where they eat, blackish-purple atmosphere edging at the orange sky, and Bullseye has his head rested between his palms, eyes wide and twitching, as a child cries its pathetic little eyes out, screaming in broken tones. He turns his chopsticks in his fingers near his face, wondering how much nicer red tears would look streaking the little brat's visage. A simple precise aim of torsion will get him the pleasure of experiencing fine dining rather than a daycare. 

Daken, across the white-cloth-covered table, sips at his wine, his fingers seemingly as delicate as the glass' stem and speaks in low tones about something important. Maybe. Bullseye can't focus, staring down the family with murderous intent. Parents feeding each other sushi while the kid bawls and bawls. What kind of psychopath takes a toddler to a roof-top restaurant in New York? Floor to ceiling windows, water wall, sexy Japanese waitresses, and there they go, dragging a pudgy-fleshed wrist into their damn Audi and forcing the monster to sit in front of a plate of teriyaki vegetables. The red jowls of the pudding-skinned baby open wide to make room for his gaping maw. Bullseye chews viciously on his chopstick, facial features ticking madly. 

"Would you _stop_?" Daken asks politely, his grim scrutiny evident beneath the gentle tone.

"Yeah," Lester's eyes flicker to Daken's only for a moment. Then he cups his hands around his mouth and looks pointedly at the family, inhaling. 

"Would you s-" his speech is brought to an abrupt halt when Daken smacks a manicured hand over his maw, effectively shutting him the _fuck up_. 

"There are easier ways to handle this, Lester," purrs Daken.

Bullseye jerks his face from Daken's mouth and reaches for his knife. The one holstered to his ankle. "Yeah, there is."

Daken pinches the bridge of his nose. " _Lester_."

"What?!"

Daken shakes his head and motions over a waiter in their language. He tosses his head to the family, and reaches into his pocket, revealing a hundred dollar bill. He slips it into the guy's pocket, and pats way too close to his crotch. The guy nods and walks to the family, kindly clasping his hands and offering a gentle smile while, Lester guesses, telling them to get the fuck out and die in a car crash on the way.

He returns moments later, and the asshats gather their creature in their arms before exiting. The woman waddles on her ice-pick heels while the dude, ballding at twenty, smacks her ass. It's fucking _weird_. Daken tips his head in thanks, and the waiter asks if he may need anything else.

"We're fine," Lester grits out. He's not upset with the waiter, he is just, by default, unhappy with babies in the premises. The man nods, comments that they should have an excellent meal, and then stares at Lester for a little bit. 

And stares.

And _stares_.

His mouth falls open, eyes bulging almost comically.

Simultaneously, Daken and Bullseye curse explicitly, and inventively. Daken's got his claws out before the guy can make a run for the cops, screaming about Daredevil, a gym, and a freak of aim.

This is the story about how Daken got Bullseye to fuck him.  
Or, in Bullseye's mind, this is the story about how he kicked Daredevil's ass. (He did. Really.)

* * *

 

Beneath him, Daredevil cried and and howled much like a demon. Desperate. He was pinned to the ground with Bullseye's sais, his shoulder's torn through so he stuck in his place. Stuck pig.

Bullseye sat upon his person, throwing various punches into his face. Jabs. Uppercuts. His nose gave a frightening crunch and the red splattered onto Bullseye's mouth, complementing his monochromatic dress nicely. A noir film and a splash of blood.

Then he stopped.

He drew his thumbs under his eyes, mask torn. _You don't need those_ , he thought. He hesitated, thumbs moving in relaxing circles at the moist skin there, from tears or sweat, he couldn't tell. How easy it'd be to gouge them out like wet beads, crack them open like an eggshell and watch the insides splatter out. How easy it'd be to shoot the first shot through the back of his neck. The bullet would careen around the man's face and tear through the right joint of his jaw as it exited, so that the lower jaw swung around as if on a hinge toward Bullseye. Daredevil was now quiet, but he was crying silently, his brows pulled tight enough to mar the cloth covering his face. _Pull it off_. His lip twitched upward in disgust at Bullseye's person.

Bullseye touched the gun at his hip.

Bullseye pressed his palms to his chest and leaned down low. "It doesn't end now."

And it won't.

"I hope you die," Bullseye whispered. "I hope we both die."

He hooked his fingers in the mask, drooling blood. His own beating had him swelling at the face. The blood splattered on his left was of his enemy's person. Particles of the devil on his neck.

He pulled his hand away.

"Tag. You're it."

* * *

In the time Bullseye had taken to travelling with Daken, he'd never expected to see him _pace_.  Daken was a patient man, always carefully calculating and waiting for his problems to come to him. And when they didn't, he'd saunter up to them and take them head on with a smile the entire time. Tonight was different. 

"You let him live!"

Bullseye stretched out languidly on the bed-sheets, rolling his eyes. A smile was on his lips, and a hired underground nurse, provided by Kingpin, cleaned his face up. She wiped the droplet of blood sticking to his eyelashes, face hidden by a cat mask. She spoke with a voice changer, giving her a robotic vibe. 

"Yep," said Bullseye, "You were there."

"Why?!"

Bullseye smiled to himself, and stayed silent. 

Daken walked to the bed and sat at the end of it. "You don't want it to end."

Bullseye stayed silent.

The nurse snorted, the enhancer giving an screechy echo. Bullseye jerked like a leper. " _Watch_ it, fuck-face."

"Yeah, lick my cunt, faggot."

Bullseye whipped his head towards her, inadvertently tearing the butterfly bandage she'd placed over his eyebrow. It gave a rip like tape torn from skin. "The _fuck_ you just call me?"

"Oh, come on," she mumbled, motioning between the two, stitches in one hand, "I can smell the AIDS from here."

Daken snorted. "If only."

Bullseye ended up murdering her, her ivory clothing smeared in red meat. He had shot her twice in the head, smiling as he told himself the second shot was in case he missed the brain the first time. The blood dried darker, and her body was pinned up against the window, a silhouette of a torn female against a darkened night sky, building lights compensating for stars.

* * *

In a cowboy hat and sunglasses, Daken leaned against their stolen truck. He rubbed solemnly at his bitten nails, seemingly missing his polish and filed ends, if the tug downwards of his lips was anything to go by. 

"We have _got_ to stop doing this."

"Doing what?" Bullseye crossed his arms over his _Good Year_ button-up. Masters of disguise.

"Killing people, running," Daken said lowly, pacing around the drive-way once more. The more time spent with Bullseye, the more and more he became distressed. A wrinkle appeared between his meticulously plucked eyebrows after a few weeks, for he'd bunched his brows together at every little thing Bullseye did. _Lester, you can't shank children. Lester, you can't use crowbars on windows any more. Lester, stop bringing Kingpin people's wallets_.

Whiny bitch.

Bullseye rose his brows. "Hey, idiot, that's what I do for a living."

Sighing quietly, Daken shoved his hands into his pockets and stared at the ground. _Oh, God_ , thought Bullseye, fingers twitching. The same air Daken put out that he did at their initial meeting in Japan had Bullseye scrubbing a hand over his face. He hated this atmosphere. A sickening drop of empathy in Bullseye's veins that made him want to hug the guy or maybe bow down at his feet, depending on the mood he set off. 

"Look," Bullseye pinched the bridge of his nose, averting his eyes, "I'll lighten up, but these guys were asking for it, right?"

"You're reckless. It's not executed well."

"You don't tell me shit on how to kill, dude," he said, stepping forward, "I'm the _best_."

Down the street, sirens flashed red and blue from behind the oak tree's revealing branches, blinking neon in the sun, casting odd shadows. Lester cursed and slipped on his sunglasses. 

Slowing down beside them, the police rolled down the window. The guy was hard-jawed, with short-cut blond hair. He looked much like Lester himself, hollowed cheekbones and a strong build. Daken whistled lowly.

"You two live here?"

"Yeah," Bullseye answered shortly. "How can we help you, officer?"

"You two are the... Garcias?" He pointed at the mailbox. In faded white paint, someone had spelled out said last name.

Lester cleared his throat. "Si... Homes."

Daken painfully grinned. "Orale."

The sergeant-like man stepped from his vehicle, across the cracked cement, where a child had written in pink chalk "EVERI WONE IS HAPP Y," and up to Daken. "I'm looking for two young Hispanic men, aged eighteen to twenty-five, multiple violent drug charges in this neighborhood. This's their address. Now y'all are whiter than snow, but y'all tell me why you're here."

Lester pointed an accusatory finger. "You are _definitely_ a border patrol reject."

"You got a name, son?" 

Daken stared, his eyes gleaming with an untold thought, bursts of neurons flashing in his mind like white lightning. Excuses. Lester turned to him, tight-lipped, then back to the officer, who leaned down to him. Guy was tall - taller than Bullseye, at least. 

"Bullseye."

It took a moment, the guy's lowered eye-lids widening, pupils dilating while he sucked in stale summer air to take a sharp inhale. Before he could grab his hand-held and exclaim that he needed some sort of back-up, he jerked and went still, eyes glazing over and paling. His limbs were rigid when he fell unto his knees, then his torso. 

Daken ripped his claws from his solar plexus. Blood spit from the wounds. 

The man leaked, and twitched, and cracked, and was no longer interesting.

* * *

"Following the brutal beating of the vigilante Daredevil, authorities have been carefully tracking the fugitive known as Bullseye, and an unnamed partner in crime," the woman's voice carries all the sophistication of every news-person as she describes the coloring and stats of the two men, "A nurse, two young men also looked after by the police, and one of our armed forces have been brutally murdered, as well as many others, albeit yet to be unidentified by forensics. His whereabouts _are_  suspected to be somewhere in and around Hell's Kitchen, but if you are to see these men," a blurry security image depicts the back of Daken's head, a pistol in one hand, turned towards and speaking with Bullseye, who wore sunglasses. A sketch artist, who created a quite accurate illustration, had her work also put onto the screen. "Extreme caution is to be taken. Call the police immediately, as these men are dangerous. The accomplice is understood to have _some_ kind of super-power. And that brings us to our next question: Where _is_ Daredevil?"

Daken stretches out on the hotel bed, following their disgusting dinner, and watches the news with a light smile threaded upon his lips. Idiots, all of them. The destruction of evidence has little to no effort put into it, and Daken is leaving fingerprints all over the place. Even used his real name when checking into the hotel.

Wrapping himself in the satin sheets, he turns off the television and arches his back, letting a small sigh pass through his lips when his spine pops. 

Bullseye exits from the shower, towel around his waist, cleaning the dried brown splotches from behind his skin.

"Count?" Daken speaks up.

"Uh..." Bullseye drags the cloth inside his ear, apparently drying the water there. He looks to Daken. "Are you naked?"

"Yes, same as you. Count?"

Turning to the mirror, he rests his head on the glass. "I don't know, shit. Fifteen?"

"Only fifteen? We have more blood on our hands than that," Daken purrs, kicking out the sheets to display himself proudly. Bullseye's skin flushes red. 

"I ain't adding my assassinations," he points out through grit teeth, brows hitched. "Costume's a job. It'd be like adding your school solos to your discography."

"Why, Lester," says Daken, grinning wide, "Were you in _band_?"

He wheezes when the remote control hits him in the center of his chest, sternum giving a startling thud. "I was in _baseball_. Pitcher."

"How predictable," Daken sits up on his elbows and prods at the darkening splotch of red on his skin. "The only mystery about you is your name. And _why_ you are."

"Why I'm what?" 

"So horribly evil," says Daken, gesturing towards him as a whole. The backs of his bitten nails hold a glint in the yellowish lighting from the bedside lamp. For all the beauty in the room, it is illuminated by the same color as piss. He supposes it makes sense. An ugly presence can ruin any kind of refinement. For example, the twitch of Lester's lip upward on a relatively pleasant visage. All the disgusting expressions he'd made had caused wrinkles to inlay on an otherwise enjoyable face. 

How _sick_ Daken is of enjoyable faces.

The pheromones he expels are inciting, warm and embracing. He spreads his legs, and stretches out listlessly, his limbs relaxed but coiled with potential energy. He smiles at Lester, who _had_ a response on his lips before the smell reached him. Now he stands with a single hand barely holding up his towel.

His fingers twitch once against the cloth and then he drops it. It crumples like a wet sheet of tissue onto the floor, and slaps against it.

Then he's with him, for the first time since they've met. He winds his arms underneath Daken's, so his palms rest on his shoulder-blades. He pulls him up so they're chest to chest and kisses him.

As always is and always will be, Bullseye looks angry when he's with Daken. Daken wraps his arms and legs around him and smiles. It's not contagious. 

"What is it," Daken whispers against his lips, eyes fluttering shut, "that entices you about murder?"

He leans up and kisses him one more time.

 _I'd swallow poison if it tasted like you_ , thinks Bullseye with a groan.

"I just like to kill," he says and kisses down his neck. "I want to kill."

"Tell me why," purrs Daken, raking his nails up and down his back. He gasps when Bullseye drags him back by the hips to their foreheads touch. He feels that against his thigh.

"Every time I kill someone, I become more like God. Can you imagine? He creates, I take away. Maybe that's the secret of religion, right? Maybe I'm the new God."

What he's doing isn't an attempt to get his own arousal to spike. Daken's no sadist, but he knows damn well who is. And the warmth radiating from Bullseye is all arousal. He gasps when Bullseye fingers him, and chews on his bottom lip, turning his eyes towards the ceiling, then lets them fall back onto Bullseye, who works at opening him up, his line of vision between his legs.

He speaks in low tones, enough to be talking to himself, boosting his own morale. It's not offending Daken at all. He knows he can make Bullseye crumble by putting off his own scent, make him fall in love with the prospect of vanilla, but he's allowing Bullseye's mind to assert that he is _in control_.

"What made you this way," probes Daken; obvious, nonchalant, blatant.

"None of your business," Bullseye spits onto his fingers, then adds a second.

"And then what," he says, bringing up a hand to cup his face. Bullseye turns his cheek into his palm on instinct.

"And then I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity."

The sex was slow, and good, and lasted most of the night.

* * *

Another car, this time, Daken driving. It's a Bimmer, two seat. They're moving from New York to Washington. Too much evidence. Daredevil's still not sighted.

There's an icy feeling in Bullseye's gut. For whatever reason, he senses this cannot last much longer. On the radio, a generic news update announces the rampage a newly-developed symbiote has brought upon Manhattan. Carnage, he calls himself. Clinically insane. The host himself is a serial killer, and the alien is just the icing on the cake. How convenient. 

"How do you preach to the world if you don't know how to read?" Bullseye says, listening to the report with a smirk of his own.

"He might not be well-read, but he can be well-listened. Maybe he's an oral learner. Writing is hard, reading is hard. He might not be able to read, but if he listens to people talk, and digests their syntax and their vocabulary there is no reason why he wouldn’t sound formal. Humans were, originally, an oral species," Daken responds, eyes on the road.

"Reading isn't hard," Bullseye juts a thumb over his shoulder at the piled novels he's got in the trunk to demonstrate. "Guy's just a fucking imbecile."

"Perhaps," Daken says, "But his kill count is _far higher_ than yours. And he's not in jail."

"Anyone can kill. Any normal man can kill, if only he has the gall to go out to do it. How many people has he killed without the symbiote?"

"Eleven, if I remember correctly."

"Exactly," Bullseye rubs his biceps and turns the air conditioning slots away from him, "I don't _have_ any powers. I'm bare-boned."

"Your bones are coated in adamantium," Daken points out, lips quirking up in a smile.

Bullseye leans over and smacks the back of his head with his open palm. 

A laugh pulls out of Daken's head and he leans forward to dodge the next one. Seattle's lights glint in the dreary weather, red and gold smeared across the windshield. 

* * *

It's a warm moistness outside, the night sky yellowish at the edges from the fading sun. Strange-looking. The air is sticky, and Bullseye's cotton tee-shirt sticks to his skin in wet patches. Sweat and rainwater beads on his forehead, hot as a spray of billowy crimson blood.

Despite the warmth edging his limbs in in a sickly wave, he shivers. He lounges atop a well-hidden roof-top garden, vines spindling around rot-iron bars of a closed-in area nursing lilies. Resting back on a bench that smells of rotting wood, he stares at his target through a scope, bleary-eyed, his focus gone. In his hands is a bow and arrow, and a detonator, for the arrow-tip is made of vibranium coating, an explosive inside. After puncturing the target's skin, the smooth trigger in his other palm will blow the evidence to bits. 

The gloves he wears and the mask pulled just beneath his eyes are leather. 

A Siamese cat, patched black and white, slinks between his legs and purrs lovingly. Bullseye looks down at its blue eyes and rubs behind its ears with his thumb. A noise like a broken motor attempting to rev rises up from its chest in a purr. 

He lets it keep him company while he searches for his target.

A Master of the Universe, business with others at Canis, a high-end restaurant with drinks starting at sixty-six bucks. Had been slipping cash using pink sheets against the rich, then wiring some of his broker's money into his account. 

Kingpin wants that money. Promises Bullseye half of it.

Not that he needs it, not with such a fat stack he has in a foreign account, growing bigger and collecting dust. He's got nothing to use it on other than the occasional new car, an impulse buy, weapons, food. Rent, very rarely.

He just likes to take. Lives or livelihood, or the item that funds either.

As he waits, he remembers.

The morning had come early for Bullseye, at five AM, with the barest hint of grey edging at the dark sky. Daken was at his side, spread out and naked as a dead hooker, inky eyelashes resting against his high cheekbone as he slept. Their sheets beneath were soaked in blood, the insides of Daken's thighs the same. A post-coital tryst had ended up looking like a CSU. Bullseye's bare chest was slathered in a sheen of sweat. His brows hitched together in memory of the odd dream. 

Lester's parents were dancing in the living room. His father had his back to him and was dressed in his mustard-colored fatigues. His mother rested her head on Kingmaster's shoulder, her eyes shut, her mouth open, as if she were dancing in her sleep.

A tank of sevoflurane was decorated in crimson bows on the wall.

His parents turned in their slow circle, and as they did, Lester saw that his father was wearing a gas mask and his mother was naked. She really was asleep, too. her feet dragged across the boards. His father clutched her around the waist, his gloved hands on the curve of her buttocks. His mother's bare white can was as luminous as a celestial object, as pale as the moon.

"Dad?" Lester asked.

His father kept dancing, turning away, and taking Lester's mother with him.

"COME ON DOWN, LESTER!" cried a deep, booming voice, a voice so loud that the china chattered in the armoire Lester didn't remember getting. Lester lurched in surprise, his heart misfiring in his chest. "COME ON DOWN! LOOKS LIKE PAYDAY CAME EARLY, DOESN'T IT! HO, HO, HO!"

Bullseye quailed at the thought of taking another step, yet his feet carried him forward, past a mirror and a couch. In the mirror, he saw himself, and he wore the mask of Deadpool, along with the body suit. He made to rip at his mask, make sure his skin was intact beneath the cloth, but couldn't move his hand. On a leather couch, Daken lounged in black lingerie, posing for a camera that wasn't there, much like a Playboy bunny. 

"Lester, stay with me," he cooed.

Bullseye found himself fondling the majority of Daken's face before walking towards the door. It swung open before he put his hand on the knob.

"MERRY GODDAMN CHRISTMAS, LESTER, YOU CRAZY THING!" hollered that great booming voice, and when Lester looked into the sky, he saw that the moon had a face. A single bulging bloodshot eye gaped from the fattened, jowly expression of Kingpin, a landscape of crater and lipids. It grinned. " _LESTER, YOU CRAZY MOTHERFUCKER, ARE YOU READY FOR THE RIDE OF YOUR LIFE_?!"

Which was when Bullseye sat up in bed and gasped, as if aware of being underwater, and not yet surfaced. The sheets stuck to his back.

He was also aware that his cock was so hard it hurt.

He woke up Daken, told him about his dream, and indicated his crotch. Daken seemed partially disgusted, but crawled on top of him and sank down with a little keening noise that had Bullseye coming in record time.

Which was really fucking weird.

Bullseye goes through a bit of an introspection, waiting for his target to appear, petting the cat that mewls and winds itself over his legs. After all, the philosophy of the wisest man that ever existed is mainly derived from the act of introspection.

What's the root of this changed lifestyle. The surgery? The almost-murder of Daredevil? As the vigilante goes through many other perils himself, Bullseye is working himself in a relatively mundane schedule, raking it in, with a beautiful partner climbing on top of him at the same time. So what's the impending dread? That someone else will kill Daredevil before he gets the chance? That he's already dead, and that's _Where Is The Daredevil_? 

He doesn't like to dwell on it, but it's entertainment enough while he sits. 

What shakes him the most is Daken's _willingness_. The guy doesn't seem much like a side-kick. His abilities are astonishing, his vendetta outrageous, so what _is_ it that has him sticking with Bullseye? Lester isn't stupid. Far from it. He knows he's hardly pleasant company. Is it a sex thing? What's seeded this attachment? 

Why the fuck was the Kingpin in the moon?

The spray from the wheels of a Roll's Royce drenches a hobo sitting huddled in mittens, despite the August weather giving Bullseye alternatively hot and cold flashes. He wails pathetically and the broker steps from the car after a black limo driver opens it up for him. 

He apologizes to the cat, stands up as it skitters helplessly around the wet tile, disoriented, then crawls beneath the bench to protect itself from rain. Nocking back the arrow, he holds it, arm tightened, bow tense, and aims, eyes a scope without any strain, because Bullseye's just _that good_. The asshole's waving a dollar bill in front of the bawling hobo's face, taunting him.

"I'll put you both out of your misery," whispers Bullseye, a grin beneath the mask, and lets the arrow loose.

It cuts through the sky like a knife in flesh, and sinks hard at the guy's neck. His jugular bobs, spurts red, and he staggers back. The limo driver screams and runs over, and the hobo begins to hyperventilate. The fat bellied man slides across the watery cobblestone, and Bullseye laughs. He's like an inner tube on a river. 

The metal stays embedded, and Bullseye licks his lips, pulling out the detonator. By now, three others have emerged from the restaurant, someone indicting that a police needs to be called. 

Well, that just won't do.

Along with the bodies, the floor, the arrow, and a wall-phone is burst to bits and Bullseye presses down on the button. "Goodbye," he muses as the floor rattles with vibrations. The sound is of hot red and brown swelling up in a billowing fury, flames licking at the inky sky. Bullseye crouches down to look at the cat, whose stomach rises and drops rapidly in fear. Its pupils are dilated. 

He pets it once more, and then whistles as he tucks it beneath his arm. No reason to kill it.

 _A White Christmas_ falls from his lips, one he once knew, as he douses the garden and bow in kerosene. He drops the match and wipes his hands when it's finished, the sweet scene of cream enthralls swallowed by chemicals and burnt meat.

The sirens are irrelevant as Bullseye descends into his BMW with a spring in his step, petting his witness' ears.

 _May your days be merry and bright_ , he thinks, revving the engine.

* * *

A cup of venomously dark coffee drops to the ground, the hot liquid splashing up onto Bullseye's shoes. "Ah! Son of a bitch!" 

The drink drenches through his running shoes and socks. He is overwhelmed with the need to douse his ankles and feet with antibacterial soap, as if it's blood rather than a drink. He shudders.

See, he _would_ pick it up, he would, and go and clean, if he didn't have at least forty different assault rifles pointed at him. He's got a few things - a pencil, a chair, the entire coffee shop. He turns on his heel and attempts to run, but the booming echo through a megaphone causes his left eye to throb horribly, and he grabs at his head again. 

Fuck. He knows that feeling. 

He's skidding to his knees when one of the officers kicks his legs out beneath him. Bullseye throws the pencil in his pocket and it hits the guy in the chest - but three layers of padding keeps it from doing any real damage, and he ends up looking like a tree stuck with an arrow more than anything, still standing and powerful.

It's okay, it's alright, he's got -

When he inhales to cry out his name, he's shot with a tranquilizer gun. His legs give out, numb like television static, and crack with a metallic whine against the tile beneath. Then his head collides with the ground, the room twisting and morphing as black edges at his vision.

 _Please don't be a dream sequence, please don't be a dream sequence_ -

Bullseye's an astronaut this time, and the galaxy is an open cube, four-walled, with never-ending height. He's vaguely reminded of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. The stars form a constellation of some idiot sticking his dick into an electrical outlet, shocked through the glans, brain burst open. Twinkling white matter bursts from the top of his head, imitating blood pouring out. 

"God," Bullseye asks, upside down in his space-suit, "Why do you hate me?"

God comes down, and God is Daredevil. _Fuckin' irony_.

"Because you shanked Elektra," he says, a basketball spinning on his halo. The more it does, the thinner the ball gets, melting down, like the glowing gold is melted iron searing through rough leather. Bullseye gasps. His space-suit can't fight against that.

A great Ferris wheel, the Arctic Eye, revolves against a backdrop of unfamiliar stars. In the seat at the top, Daken waves at him, and he wears a wedding gown. What an asshole! He doesn't even need the helmet. Deadpool sits beside him in G.I. Joe pajamas, flipping Bullseye off. 

"Hey! Fuck you, buddy!"

Daredevil floats closer to him. "God does not approve of cussing."

"It doesn't matter," Bullseye wipes his eyes with the sleeve of a Polo shirt that's wrapped around his shoulders. The constellations move in dizzying rhythms. "I've done a lot of bad shit, I'm going to hell." A skewed form of _Sunshine of Your Love_ emanates from the Ferris wheel. It sounds partially demonic.

While this happens through Bullseye's mind, security forces lift him onto a stretcher, fastened with lovely metal restraining bars. Bullseye twitches once, violently, in his sleep, and the doctor jumps back. He plucks the dart from his skin, which stuck through in his arm, and slips a mask around his ears, the muzzle sitting over his nose and mouth.

For how capable Bullseye is, he's still only human. The dart isn't meant for a large animal, especially affixed to apply to Bullseye's height and weight, ketamine to sedate him and not kill him. 

Two of the helmets come by where the doctor, a young Indian man named Patel, stands, measuring Bullseye's vitals and attending to him as if he were any other patient. The men mirror SWAT agents. 

"That's him?"

"Yes," Patel answers, "This is Bullseye."

"Asshole."

"Quite," he says. "Where is the other one?"

"Other what?"

He turns towards the masked man, and motions to Bullseye, brows risen on his forehead to create wrinkles that make him look older than he is. "The other accomplice!"

The SWAT men turn and look, jaws agape. The cloth behind the bullet-proof vests jitter comically with the stuttering of their hearts.

"Right," one says lowly, "The other one."

* * *

"Subject seems obsessively concerned with power. Having control, suffering from neurotic impulses. Experiencing feelings of extreme satisfaction and disappointment within moments. Possible fantasist, extremely volatile and opinionated; self sentimental, suffering from damage, denial. Suffering from over-discipline, and a lack of remorse." _Control_. 

Over the course of many months, Bullseye is injected with various things, fed nothing but liquidated food, and is notified of Daken's escape. He took everything. All the money. Everything valuable Lester's ever owned. After he lashes out in anger, they strap him down again, and another straitjacket is donned upon his person. 

He gains no weight, and feels very sickly. His life has become the same as it was when trapped inside his own body, a mind in a corpse. With the gun at his head.

Except, this time, all the rifles are loaded, constantly pointed at him as he sits still in his cell. It's an iron cube. He tries to sleep most of the time, escape into dreamland, but he's not nourished enough to have that active of imagery.

Staring at a gray slab of metal becomes awfully boring, he recognizes after five days of counting blinks in a minute.

He can't remember dreams any more. He sees, or thinks he sees, an afterimage of whatever it would be. But even that comes with exhaustion. They were more flashing images of horrid memory than anything. Somehow, through all the joy he's found, the splattered blood of his victims that brings him smiles just turns into the blood of his loved ones. When he still loved. ( _Mom? Wake up._ )

The thought of himself pushing that sharp edge like a searing iron through Elektra's guts (oh, God, what a beautiful death) would always morph into:

       You'll kill no one.  
                      _Ever again_.

It takes five months for him to be let into the commons, and he's considered a newbie.

He gets a new cell, too.

Every night, at ten o’clock, the guards switch the lights off, and that’s when the prison becomes so dark that nothing can be seen except for mere reflections. Not in his cell anyway. The other inmates called it ‘the prison’s asshole’, and there's probably no better definition for that tiny angle of shit and cold stone he's been locked into.

As a free man, he had seen a TV news report on Ryker’s Island, and being there made the whole thing look ridiculous. Sometimes, when he had nothing better to do, he thought about the shit-blabbering TV presenter, with her smart grey outfit and her unnatural white teeth, as she talked about how high security prisons gave the inmates the time they needed to redeem themselves of whatever the fuck they had done.

He’d burst out laughing in the silence of the corridor. Redeem himself? What the fuck. Spending time in the forgotten corner of the world, in a shithole where he can't stand up without bumping his head against the ceiling, hell no, it doesn't make him want to redeem himself. It makes him want to get out and spread some more mayhem, because it's so fucking boring he can't stand the thought of spending his whole life here.

There are exceptions. Like lunchtime. There, things get interesting, amusing even.

Newbies who get targeted as soon as they set foot in the prison grounds, who get beaten to a pulp, who get cornered in the showers, who get their asses feasted on. It's quite interesting, to see how Darwin’s theories apply to Ryker’s inmates; the survival of the fittest is Law Number One in that place. There hasn't been many dead people, but a couple of inmates had not survived the fights. Most of them try to appeal for insanity to escape the rapes. Objectively speaking, if things go on like they are going for them, they’d probably go mad. For real. He's a silent observer of what happens during the communal moments. During his time as a newbie, they had tried to make him a victim, but it hadn’t ended well for neither of the two Big Bad Thugs who had slammed him against the wall, trying to immobilize him.

One of them is still under medical care. The other is short of his voice.

He scares the fuck out of them, that’s how it is. The thugs who had attacked him didn’t know what he had done, what he was in Ryker’s for, but everyone else does, and they never try to get near him. Even the guards – he can see the look in their eyes. With everyone else, they’d just say, “Move your ass, you filthy son of a bitch.” (Another reason for a criminal to redeem himself was indeed the treatment he received.) They’d just kick around, punch around, plant their truncheons into the inmates’ waists, arms, legs. With him, they just want to get him back into his cell and hurry the fuck off.

* * *

When he's told he has a visitor, it's not hard to guess who it is. 

Bullseye walks on miserable legs, the muscles that had once carried him so far gone, leaving him skinnier and weaker. The handcuffs are vibranium, thick chunks that immobilize the entirety of his forearm. He'll have to balance the phone between his shoulder and ear.

Daken looks much the same, dressed to his teeth, looking refreshed and clean faced. His eyes are clear behind designer sunglasses, with yellow frames and orange lenses. It looks much like the lemony sky before twilight. His face is without wrinkles or blemishes.  _Nosferatu_ , Bullseye vaguely thinks, body shaking with rage.

"Your hair looks wonderful grown out," is Daken's conversation starter, all gentle smirks and empty smiles. Bullseye's not granted a hair-cut, his blonde strands seemingly heavy against his head. 

"Die in a car crash," Bullseye grits out, his jaw tightened. 

Daken toys with the cuff of his ironed shirt. "Still bitter, I see."

"You fuckin' left me here," he growls out, sneer tight on his face. 

"Yes, well, one engine barely makes it away."

Lester wants to slam his adamantium caked head against the glass. Instead he settles for rolling his eyes in his head dramatically, "What the fuck are you talking about?"

"I'm not saying it was easy."

"Oh. What a _Greek travesty, honey_. I'm sure with almost three billion under the belt, it was real difficult."

"You left me," Daken muses unemotionally.

"Left you? I was tackled to the ground and stuck in the arm. And you let it happen. You could have killed all of them and still survived."

Daken looks irritated, "You'd have been killed. I'm not a human shield, my sweetheart."

"Don't you call me that! Don't you dare!" Barks out Lester, "I'm not your anything. I'm not playing some role in some sick, twisted game you have."

"Oh, you always were, Lester."

Lester rests his forehead against the slab of clinically white counter and feels a wave of sickness cover his limbs. His face slackens and pales when he catches sight of his trembling hands, once so useful, locked up. They tremble hard enough to blur, his veins lifted like cable wires. "Did you kill Wolverine?" He whispers quietly, his throat tight.

"No."

Eyes shutting, Lester smiles against the cool counter, resting his cheek against it. The phone hangs cautiously close to the ground. "Good."

Daken frowns. "Good," he echoes in thought.

Bullseye thinks of Kingpin, big as the moon, donning orange, having been wheeled in only yesterday. A laugh rises up in his chest. "I don't want you to kill him without me. Daken, you crazy motherfucker."

He lifts his head and readjusts the phone, making eye-contact. He knows how to leave. He knows where to go. "Are you ready for the ride of your life?"

Daken's lips quirk to the side in a smirk. He leans forward. "Always, my dear."

"I'm gonna need one thing from you."

"And what's that?" he winds a finger around the cord of the phone. 

Bullseye closes his eyes, and behind his lids, he re-imagines, for the hundredth time, tossing that fork with infallible aim at that crying baby's neck, turning those screams into wet gurgles. He exhales through his nose. "That _fuckin_ ' kid."


End file.
